IT isn’t the nudity Daniel Sunjata minds, or playing a gay baseball player – it’s just, well, those on-stage showers. That, and the theatergoers who whip out their binoculars.
“Presumably, they’re just trying to see what’s going on on stage,” says the hunky star of “Take Me Out.”
“But if they use them during the shower scene, I’m sure they’re looking at other things.”
At least they’ve been more restrained than the woman in the front row at the Joseph Papp Public Theater who, during the group shower scene, yelled, “Oh my God, yes!”
The other day, looking as if he’d stepped out of a J.Crew catalog in a sweater and pressed jeans, Sunjata was fighting a hoarse throat – a consequence, he says, of all those showers in Broadway’s chilly Walter Kerr Theatre, where Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out” opens Thursday.
In case you missed it the first time around, during its sold-out run last fall at the Public, Sunjata plays Darren Lemming, the biracial star center fielder of the New York Empires.
Darren’s casual revelation that he’s gay (“I hope this sends a message . . . [that] any young man, creed, whatever, can go out there and become a ballplayer – or an interior decorator”) rocks the team and sparks a tempest in the locker room.
Sunjata happens to be straight – something he’s more willing to reveal than his age, which he reluctantly puts at “late 20s.” (Careful readers of his resume, which includes a master’s degree in fine arts from NYU in 1998, find him teetering on the edge of 30.)
Just how old he is doesn’t matter to the besotted fans who trade Sunjata sightings and wistful musings on the Net:
“Is he looking for a Mrs. Sunjata?”
“Or a Mr.?”
“Does he live anywhere close to Laguna Beach?”
Partial answers to the above: Yes, he’s single. No, he’s not looking for a husband.
He lives in Flatbush – in a West Indian area – a far cry from the Upper West Side, a neighborhood that’s popular with actors but one Sunjata says he can’t afford.
Now on the cusp of stardom – you may have seen him on “Sex and the City” and “Bad Company” – he has the guarded reserve of an established celebrity but none of the arrogance.
The glowing reviews, apparently, haven’t gone to his head. “Daniel Sunjata plays Darren perfectly – making him haughty but ultimately human,” wrote The Post’s Donald Lyons, while Newsday’s Linda Winer raved about his charisma, which “fills the room without effort.”
That he shares Derek Jeter’s good looks and biracial heritage hasn’t hurt either.
In fact, “Take Me Out” playwright Greenberg can’t believe his luck in finding “someone young, charismatic, handsome, funny, commanding – and biracial . . . It’s sort of miraculous that there was such a person and that he was willing to take this on.”
Irish, German and African-American, Sunjata grew up in Chicago, the adopted son of a police dispatcher and a civil rights worker, both baseball fans.
He wasn’t, and aside from a late, eighth-grade foray into baseball – he was a center fielder there, too – Sunjata can take the game or leave it.
Still, it was interesting, he says, to have a day out with the “Take Me Out” cast at Yankee Stadium.
Better still was starting rehearsals to find The Post’s headline, “I’m not gay,” above a picture of Mets’ player Mike Piazza.
“We thought it was a pretty funny coincidence,” Sunjata grins. “It just goes to show that Richard’s put his finger on a pulse of something that’s very timely.”
That’s only one reason Sunjata says “Take Me Out” is more than the sum of its shower scenes.
“The play is about loss, betrayal, hubris and a tragic flaw,” he says.
“If people are going to buy a ticket just because they’re going to see some penises on stage, great. But hopefully they’ll realize they were brought for something more.”
STARS IN STRIPES
In “Take Me Out,” Daniel Sunjata plays handsome baseball player Darren Lemming, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Derek Jeter. Here’s how they stack up:
DARREN LEMMING PLAYER DEREK JETER
New York Empires TEAM New York Yankees
Walter Kerr Theatre PLAYS AT Yankee Stadium
Star center fielder POSITION Star shortstop
White father, black mother ETHNIC MAKEUP Black father, white mother
Gay SEXUAL ORIENTATION Straight